Today I will begin my summertime series on sabermetrics and hockey. I will begin by looking at adjusted +/- ratings. This is a rough method to try to gage puck possession relative to one's teammates. It is not as exact as Corsi (which I will discuss later) to gage puck possession because it has a far smaller sample size. It can be significantly affected by shooting percentages and saves percentages when a player is on the ice. It is not a measure of the same thing as Corsi but it does give a good measure of players who succeeded in the role that they played with their team.

Here are the top 20 players last season by adjusted +/- rating:

Rank

Name

+/- Rating

Team

1

Matt Niskanen

+30.8

Pittsburgh Penguins

2

Ondrej Palat

+27.0

Tampa Bay Lightning

3

Anze Kopitar

+26.6

Los Angeles Kings

4

Kyle Turris

+25.6

Ottawa Senators

5

Marc-Eduard Vlasic

+25.2

San Jose Sharks

6

David Krejci

+23.0

Boston Bruins

7

Chris Kunitz

+22.8

Pittsburgh Penguins

8

Patrice Bergeron

+22.0

Boston Bruins

9

Jaden Schwartz

+20.6

St. Louis Blues

10

Brent Burns

+20.2

San Jose Sharks

11

Brad Marchand

+20.0

Boston Bruins

12

Craig Smith

+19.6

Nashville Predators

13

Corey Perry

+19.2

Anaheim Ducks

14

Marian Hossa

+19.0

Chicago Blackhawks

15

Jamie Benn

+18.8

Dallas Stars

16

Jay Bouwmeester

+18.6

St. Louis Blues

17

Mark Giordano

+18.4

Calgary Flames

18

Jarome Iginla

+18.0

Boston Bruins

18

Tyler Johnson

+18.0

Tampa Bay Lightning

20

Jaromir Jagr

+17.8

New Jersey Devils

This is a group of players who succeeded in their roles last season. In the future, I want to take a look at a couple of the players who are at the top of this list.

I limited the list to players who played 50 or more games with one club. This is intended to prevent a zero player who plays hardly any games on a really good or bad team from making the list. Zetterberg missed the cutoffs with only 45 games played.